


battle born

by rizahawkaye



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: (and some torture lite too), (for cole and ed.......mostly), (i'm gay so i love found family), (kinda. that man is hopeless), (more like.....implied), Action/Adventure, Assault, Attempted Sexual Assault, F/M, Found Family, Guns, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Military, Parental Riza Hawkeye, Parental Roy Mustang, Violence, badass riza, not a romance but maybe a little bit? roy's barely in the story, riza & ed bonding~
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22233841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizahawkaye/pseuds/rizahawkaye
Summary: Amestris is days post-Promised Day and surrounding countries are shivering with anticipation. Tension is high in the air, nearly palpable, and as a battered Amestris struggles to find its footing in now-Fuhrer Grumman, the town of Aerugat is growing ever-steady, resolute as stone. Something is brewing in the small border town of Aerugo, something brutal, and its sights are set on the weakened Amestris and its illustrious Flame Alchemist, Hero of Ishval, a tool to be used for...Edward Elric has choices to make, people to save, and a certain lieutenant to escort on a cross-country journey to retrieve her blind colonel from the sticky hands of Aerugat. (All without permission from the Amestrian government, of course. Ed begs for no man.)Cole is along for the ride.
Relationships: (edling is implied...ling has already gone back to xing at this point), Edward Elric & Riza Hawkeye, Edward Elric & Roy Mustang, Edward Elric/Ling Yao, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang, RoyAi
Comments: 48
Kudos: 72





	1. i bite the hand that feeds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not doing much fic writing anymore? but i've been working on battle born for quite some time (over a year for sure)? so i'm bringing it, completely unfinished, here to ao3 for others to enjoy? i've missed fandom interaction like a limb and i need something frivolous and fun to write while i agonize over the first draft of my novel
> 
> anyway, i'm shooting for every other sunday updates for this fic. if anyone followed along for buried alive, however, then you know i cannot guarantee updates. at the very least the "every two weeks" is more like a soft prediction than a deadline. i'll try my best but i've got a busy life (:
> 
> as for tags, there is some torture in this fic. i haven't written it yet but i'm not planning for it to be very graphic. and it's brief, as it stands now. if anything changes tags and warnings will be updated accordingly. there is also *implied attempted sexual assault* of a character in which nothing happens except another character says they want something to happen. but nothing happens (i have written this part already, it is not subject to change)
> 
> battle born is buried alive's darker cousin, is how i've been describing it. i wanted buried alive to be darker, grittier, more of a commentary on how nasty people can be, how far they'll go, how manipulative they can become and i......chickened out. i won't chicken out this time.
> 
> enjoy!

Cole bit at his cuticles. A filthy habit, his mother used to say, but where was she now? Not here to bother him about his cuticles. If he was lucky she was writhing somewhere beneath the earth, dead to everyone but herself. So Cole bit at his cuticles like a nervous dog, his teeth clicking together in the back of his mouth. He hated these meetings. People pressed in on him like a storm; their barely-contained energy overflowed a space that was already overflowing to begin with. Overflowing with furniture, overflowing with papers, overflowing with the fetid stench of the best air Aerugat had to offer which, Cole lamented, was not very good at all. It smelled like sewage and the sweat of a hundred overworked men pooling on the floorboards of his house. Probably, well, because it was.

Cole made the suggestion once that Ceely should hold these little get togethers in the town hall. It had plenty of seating, and though the place was dusty from nonuse, it had nice acoustics. Heck, even the church would be better than Cole’s own living room! But Ceel would not budge, because, “I need them to trust me. I need them to feel like they’re a part of us.” Cole reasoned they could no more feel a part of this place than they could feel a part of the Amestrian soldiers outside, attempting to peer in the windows. He didn’t press the issue, though. It wasn’t in his nature to argue, really. So he slumped against the wall and bit his cuticles, his ankles crossed in front of him. A burly man bumped his shoulder and went to town on a scab with his pocket knife. Cole wanted to scream.

“All right, all right,” Ceely said. He was standing on the coffee table moving his hands up and down, trying to quiet the _genteel_ townsfolk of Aerugat. “I can already see the blue dogs trying to listen in,” Cole glanced at one of the living room windows and, sure enough, there was a shadow on the other side of the cream colored curtains, “and so we gotta keep this quiet and we gotta keep it brief.”

Someone snorted, but silence followed nonetheless. Ceely cleared his throat.

“Whatever happened in Amestris has left a hole in their defenses,” he said. “And what I mean by that is that the number of military police they’ve got out here has dwindled. Where we were once seeing five to ten kicking dirt up through our streets we now see three to five. I know I’m not the only one to have caught on to their frantic behavior two nights ago, either. It came after that big light show,” Ceely waved his hands high in the air, “and it hasn’t left them yet.”

Two nights ago. Cole had been playing ball in the Pit two nights ago, the glow of headlights from military jeeps acting as stadium lights. He and his friends had won the match, he remembered, and as they were nudging and jostling each other they’d felt something beneath their feet shift. Like what Cole imagined an earth quake might feel like. The headlights jiggled. Cole had looked up and there in the sky was a mashup of red and purple, of colors so striking and powerful that he felt at a loss for breath. Someone beside him had said, “That’s over Amestris.”

And it had been over Amestris. What a sweet treat Ceely had made of the whole ordeal. He was now convinced that this strange phenomenon had been their opening. “It’s a sign!” he’d screamed at Cole as Cole wandered back to the house backward, eyes glued to the odd lights. “This is it, little man. This is it.” He slung his arm around the back of Cole’s neck and panted at the sky like he’d just finished running a marathon.

Ceely’s vibrant green eyes tore through the congregation in the living room. Mostly it was men who came to these things. Aerugonian veterans and ex-farmers and career alcoholics. They were old, sort of kind, harmless men who were angry and needed a place to vent. Whether Cole liked that it was in his own home or not, he was at least glad they weren’t ripping into the military police outside. Cole had seen his fair share of splintered bones and missing jaws thanks to trigger-happy Amestrians who felt death was a fine punishment for a mouthy Aerugonian. He shuddered.

“So what’s the deal, Ceely?” someone said. Cole recognized the voice, the heavy Aerugonian accent. It curdled his blood. “Why’d you call us in ‘ere for that?”

Ceely turned to face the owner of the voice, Seamus. He had to do a one-eighty on the table, and suddenly his back was to Cole. Ceely looked so big from the front, like he could take the world in his arms and squeeze it dry, but his back was so small. Cole could see the crease in his coat where his muscles didn’t fill it out.

“I have a proposition for you all,” he said, not addressing Seamus directly. “We go to Amestris.”

The room erupted in chatter. Everyone moved about like skittish birds, their feathers flying everywhere. Cole maintained himself but lifted off his wall — intrigued for the first time. The scab-picker next to him had moved on to a new scab, still engrossed in his work.

“Quiet, quiet,” Ceely reminded everyone, but the noise only dialed down this time instead of disappearing. “Hear me out. I think Amestris has been hit by something big. I think they’re weak. Word on the street is that their fuhrer is dead, there was some trouble from the north, and,” here Ceely paused, obviously for effect. The room waited on his word like he was delivering a sermon, a prophet and his disciples. “The Flame Alchemist has been injured. Blinded, I’ve heard.”

It was Seamus again. “What of it? Why’s that mean a thing to us?”

Ceely smiled, his dimples settling deep into his cheeks. “Because he has something I want,” his voice was a purr, a promise, “and now’s our chance to take it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the thing ceely wants isn't riza i'm just gonna squash that now. my son has better sense than that


	2. do you hear the linoleum?

The hum of hospital fluorescents. The scream of fabric on skin. The heat of sunlight searing his eyes. The odd but familiar rhythm of a live chest, of lungs expanding and deflating. Al slipped his arms beneath the sheets and ran his fingers over the grooves of his ribs, the flesh pulsing uncomfortably with the contact. He closed his eyes. The whirr of the machines that monitored his vitals were loud in his ears, their beeps that came every half a second felt like someone were tossing pebbles into his temples. 

His therapist said this was normal. She said it was some kind of sensory processing dysfunction and that eventually, with steady therapy, Al would be okay again. But Al had been okay. He was okay when he was pulled from the gate into the light of day, and then he wasn’t. His chest tightened. What if he never got better?

Someone on the floor was pouring alcohol. Al could smell it from in his room. He hid his nose under his sheets and attempted to wait the stench out as it threatened to twist his insides. The hospital was a sickly mix of sweet and sour, of perfume and rot. Of bleach and cologne. Al settled deeper into his mattress, his feet singing when they met the foot of his bed. He curled them up and away from the cold press of plastic, his toes igniting. “Ow,” he hissed. 

His brother, Edward, was slumped into a chair at his bedside. His arm lay limp and sagging along an armrest, bones pressing up into his skin. It was the arm Al had retrieved for him, days ago. Days that had felt like weeks. Ed’s face was neutral, his lashes dusted the tops of his cheeks, and he looked, Al realized, young and old at the same time. It was like his brother’s face was rippling in a pond, flickering between a round faced fifteen-year-old boy and the sorry, wrinkled face of their father. 

Al tried to prop himself up on his elbows, but no dice. The doctor had told him it could take weeks, _probably months_ , before Al would get his strength back. Al had spent so much time inside a body that had no such limitations, no muscles to tire, that he’d been surprised by the doctor’s wording — get his strength back. As though the strength he had was ever his in the first place. He’d been a small boy when he lost his body, his arms no bigger than the wooden handle of a shovel. No bigger than Ed’s new arm was now, bony and glaringly thin. He owed all his strength to the clanking metal he used to call his body. 

Ed was given instructions too. _Exercise your arm every day_ , the doctor had said. Al had listened intently because he knew his brother wouldn’t. _Eat well-balanced meals. No sudden influx of junk food. Start small, low weights. No weight bearing until you’re in a clinic with a physical therapist. Ed, I’d like you to see a therapist as well. What do you mean, ‘No’? I think you should watch your tone, young man—_

Edward mumbled something in his sleep. His head rolled over the back of the chair, his mouth parted in exhaustion. Somewhere through the hospital room door, Al heard the squeaking of nurse’s sneakers over the linoleum. He knew it was a matter of time before one found their way to him to poke at the tube running subcutaneously up his forearm. Of course Al would be polite and pretend that her tugging at the plastic wasn’t incredibly uncomfortable but it was, and Ed would probably say something, and it would sound nasty coming from him. 

In a desperate attempt to save the soon-to-intrude nurse’s feelings, Al said, “Brother.” Words dragged like nails along the soft inside of his throat. His own voice was deafening in his ears. But he had to speak, he had to force his body forward. What was it the therapist had said? _Stimulation is good. Stimulation will retrain the brain._

Ed’s face didn’t even flinch, which was of no surprise to Al. If he hadn’t been an integral part of the Promised Day himself then Al was sure his brother could have slept through it. And it seemed that, for the most part, Ed’s ability to sleep anywhere and for any length of time was one solely his own. He couldn’t blame it on Al’s gated body anymore. 

“Ed,” Al was louder this time, dreading the idea that he may have to try and lift his arm, reach, and then flick his brother’s head. Just thinking about the energy that would take made his stomach churn. “Ed!” 

Ed never startled awake so much as stay perfectly still as his eyes shot open, ready for danger. He took in the grey hue of Al’s hospital room, closed off from the sunlight attempting to pour in from the single window beside Al’s bed, and thumbed drool off the corner of his mouth. 

“Are you all right, Al?” he said, yawning. His healthy hand drifted over the wires and tubes coming from inside and out of Al, like he were testing the heat over a stove. “Do you need me to get you something?”

Ed’s constant concern both annoyed and warmed Al, though he would never admit to the former. He looked at his brother through the curtain of blonde hair over his eyes. “I think a nurse is about to come in and I don’t want you being rude to them, so I thought you could go grab something to eat in the cafeteria.”

Ed blinked. He opened his mouth once to protest, and then shut it again.

“I’m not even hungry, Al.”

“I don’t care.” 

The memory of Ed’s last outburst coursed between them like a tide, pushing and pulling from one boy into the other. A nurse letting light into the room, Al’s harsh wince, Ed’s tight grip over her forearm, ripping it away from the window. Golden eyes met less-but-still-golden eyes, and only one boy would win this silent battle, and it would probably be the boy who just recently had any eyes to use. Ed sighed.

“Fine,” he said, rising from the chair like a stiff old man. “I’ll go get some pudding or something.”

“That’s all you’ve eaten for two days, Brother. Have one of those sandwiches with the toothpicks in it. It looks like a candle on a birthday cake made of tomatoes and cheese and chicken.”

Ed drilled a sympathetic look into Al. The whites of his eyes blurred, softened, like headlights in a deep fog. His lips were a thin line that upturned at one corner into a slight smile. “All right, Al.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two weeks!


	3. overtaking, but not overtaken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (/◕ヮ◕)/ i decided to post chapter 3 too

Al couldn’t eat anything but ice chips and broth. It was a child’s dream, Ed realized, that led the brothers to believe Al would emerge from the Gate with his appetite intact, an apple pie steaming in his hands. But those damn doctors had shot down everything Ed was impatient about: checking off foods from Al’s list, racing down the dirt road to Granny and Winry’s house. It made sense that his brother would need time to rebuild muscle and oil his joints and relearn movements. And Ed understood to some extent that both he and Al needed to slow down, for however long. But Ed hated the way Al looked shrink-wrapped, like someone had shot him in a forest and brought him back in a cooler, ready for the fire pit. He wanted to stick a straw in Al’s chest and blow him up like a balloon, then tie him to a string and lead him out of this damned hospital, flipping the entire staff the finger on his way. 

Ah, but Al would never approve. 

The cafeteria was a conglomerate of long rectangular tables and fridges with glass windows so you could see into them without opening them. It smelled like stale food and dish soap mixed with sick, and it was impossibly bright. Ed squinted into the room upon first entering, his eyes stinging. He had to blink three times, long and hard, before they adjusted. 

Directly on the other side of the cafeteria’s double doors were rows and rows of foldable tables. They lined up next to one another like soldiers, their white tops and maroon seats plotting along the cream colored linoleum. The cafeteria walls were a pale pink with green trim, and Ed couldn’t figure out whether that was some psychological ploy to get people to eat more or a very unfortunate stylistic choice, but he hated it either way. He maneuvered through the tables of old people smacking on their pudding and children pulling cheese off stuff that looked like it was supposed to be pizza but smelled like baked cardboard and canned pasta sauce. He spied grey gunk on one patient’s plate; crusty noodles on another; green beans that, even from Ed’s few feet away, smelled freezer burned.

Ed stuffed his hands into his pockets, made a B line for the more palatable foods, and looked into the refrigerators: there were pudding cups and individually wrapped cake slices, cups of cold soup and salads tossed in plastic containers, sodas and sandwiches. Ed found the one Al was talking about and retrieved it, observing the tiny red-tipped toothpick sticking out of the bread. It looked less like a candle and more like an accident waiting to happen. But Ed stood in line and paid for it anyway, his hunger mounting the more he thought about tomatoes and cheese and chicken. 

He was about to sit at a table near the cashier when he spotted a familiar head of blonde hair two tables down. He went to her instead, the sandwich feeling very heavy in his hand.

“Lieutenant Hawkeye,” he said in greeting. She was nursing a styrofoam cup of ice chips and reading through a paper, her face drawn. Still pale.

“Ed,” she said, less in greeting and more like he’d caught her doing something she wasn’t supposed to. She folded the paper and fixed him with her amber gaze. “Please have a seat.”

He did.

They sat in companionable silence for the few minutes it took Ed to devour his sandwich. He was careful to remove the toothpick prior to taking the first bite because he wasn’t sure he’d stop once he started. He never realized how badly a body could crave sustenance when all it was getting was artificial sugar in cold, goopy lumps from a spoon. He never wanted to eat pudding again.

When he was through, Hawkeye asked, “How’s Alphonse?”

Ed wanted to look anywhere but at the gauze over her neck, so he looked over her shoulder and watched a young girl share a piece of chocolate cake with her mother instead. “He’s doing well,” he said. “What happened to all your hair?”

He had noticed that it was gone, cropped close to the skin of Hawkeye’s skull. Only a few stray strands stuck out over her ears. Her injury looked menacing with no hair to keep it covered. What the gauze failed to hide was the purpling of her skin where the sword had severed her veins, her carotid. Her fair skin was bruised from the place where her jaw met her ear all the way down to the swath of her collar bone. 

“I cut it,” she said. “The nurses said it would make wound maintenance easier.”

That sounded right to Ed, but he still felt contempt for the hospital tumbling around in his gut. Everyone here kept ruining things. Changing them. He knew it was childish to feel so bitter toward a building that was overrun, over-worked, and over-tired, but he couldn’t help it. 

Though he knew she might not answer, he asked, “What were you reading?” A janitor came by and swept Ed’s trash into a trashcan. Hawkeye thanked them before addressing Ed’s question.

“It’s news about the Promised Day,” she said. “And it’s speculation about the continued fallout. I’m sure you’ve heard that General Grumman has been named interim führer.”

Ed hadn’t heard that. All he’d known for days was Al and the hospital. The loud, abrasive hospital and his brother’s taught senses. He shook his head.

“Well he has,” Hawkeye went on, “and I know that _interim_ is usually a term used to mean temporary, but this will not be.”

“That could mean good things for the colonel, right?” Ed inquired. He’d started to fidget with his hands under the table. The mother and her daughter had gone, taking his distraction with them. His eyes kept going back to Hawkeye’s ruined throat. 

She looked uncharacteristically small in the light blue hospital clothes. She looked like she might fade away into the background at any moment, a ghost. 

“It could,” she said. Something warred inside of her and she sized Ed up, her all-seeing eyes piercing right into him. Or through him, possibly, but he couldn’t be sure. Finally something won and she reopened the paper, showing him with her finger what she had been reading as he approached. He scanned the first few lines and then groaned, his head wanting to drop to the table. 

“For how long?” he said.

“Indefinitely, as of right now.”

“But I had heard that Marcoh was gonna—”

Hawkeye held up her hand, palm facing Ed. Her hawk’s eyes did a sweep of the cafeteria and then she said, “Not here.” 

The nurse was done with Al by the time Ed returned to the room, Hawkeye in tow. He was suspicious of her walking around the hospital with a deep chasm-like gash in the flesh of her neck, but he knew better than to question her judgement. The only person brave enough to do that was the colonel, and Hawkeye had said he’d be in surgery until late afternoon. Something about severed tendons in his hands that needed mending. Ed didn’t really care so he didn’t really pay attention to the details.

Al’s face split into a grin when he noticed Hawkeye. “Lieutenant Hawkeye!” he said, voice high, tight. He seemed more tired than he had before Ed left, which meant whatever the nurse had done with him had been hard work on his part. Ed’s chest surged. “I really like your haircut.” 

Hawkeye smiled at him and sat on the edge of his bed, minding the piles of tangled things that slid from away from him like a wiry snake. 

“How are you feeling?” she said. 

“I think I’m feeling better than he is,” he pointed at Ed with his chin, and Ed shrugged. “Hospitals make him feel a little cagey.”

Hawkeye laughed, but the sound was airy, strained. Ed frowned when she touched the side of her neck, fingers misting over the gauze. A dozen things raced into his mind at once: infections, mostly, and the chance of her slipping and slamming into an object and reopening her wound. He imagined the colonel coming out of surgery with his hands tightly bandaged and a fierce, dangerous fire in his unseeing eyes upon learning his adjutant had been gallivanting around the hospital with _Fullmetal. Let me remind you that you gave alchemy away._

_Bastard. Let me remind you that you can’t even make a fist._

And then Hawkeye would intervene, saying something like, _It was my decision, Colonel, now please settle down._

But the colonel would still simmer. And Ed would still feel guilty. 

“Your hair is so long,” Hawkeye said once she’d quenched the sting in her throat. 

Al touched the tips of his hair. He didn’t have to reach far. 

“I can cut it for you, if you want.” Hawkeye offered. Al’s cheeks flushed, but he nodded, whispering something about minding his over-sensitive skin. “Could you find me a pair of scissors, Ed? If there are none in here then there should be a pair in the nurse’s station out in the hall.”

Ed went silently around the room as Al chatted with Hawkeye about food and surgeries and everything Ed wanted to beat out of existence with his fists. He found scissors in the drawer under the sink and handed them to Hawkeye.

“Thank you, Ed,” she said. Her gaze on his was sweet, kind. Genuine. He looked away, the image of her nasty bruise coming to him unbidden. 

Ed stood and watched as Hawkeye cut through the first chunk of Al’s hair. It sounded like paper ripping. Al’s lips pinched, his eyes crinkled at the corners, but he seemed otherwise okay. 

“There has been some buzz in Aerugo,” Hawkeye said. She moved to sit crossed-legged as she faced Al, and Ed used his foot to slide the chair behind her. He hoped it would catch her if she happened to fall backward. “And in Creta, even Drachma.” She titled Al’s head to get a better angle. 

“What kind of buzz?” Ed asked. 

“Not the good kind.”

Ed considered this. He didn’t know what it meant, but at the same time he was afraid that he did. Amestris was in chaos, even with the induction of an interim führer. And Amestris had a lot of enemies. Enemies that have been waiting decades to sink their claws in this country, one way or another. Ed knew better than anyone how badly waiting could make you want something. The longer you waited, the more the want pooled inside of your being. It sat heavy there, like rainwater over a tent or snow on a branch, and when it broke there was no going back. 

“And the colonel? I thought Marcoh had a stone, so why has he been put on leave?” Ed thought back to Hawkeye’s newspaper, the picture of the colonel’s milky white eyes placed in the middle of text about his impending leave of absence after his _heroics_ on the Promised Day. 

“They’re discussing discharge as well,” Hawkeye said. There was bite to her tone. “He refuses to use the stone until Havoc can walk again. Not only that, but he’ll be in the hospital for a while. He can’t go from being blind to not overnight.”

“Because the staff would know.” Hospital and government. 

“Yes,” she said. 

“And they can’t have a blind soldier in service, no matter who the fuhrer is.”

Hawkeye’s silence was his answer. The last long wave of Al’s hair went fluttering to the bed as she sliced right through it.


	4. pen to paper. and then the ink dries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a day early~

Riza had cut her hair. Roy could tell because every time she leaned over him, or into him, or around him her hair no longer brushed across his face or his temple. Of course he couldn’t blame her. He figured that managing that hair with that injury, well—

He stopped short, as he always did, of actually imaging what the lieutenant's throat might look like. He had to try very hard and concentrate very hard to freeze the image in his mind before it became concrete. It started as a snapshot of blacks and blues painted over her skin, and then he fractured it, the pieces falling away into nothingness. It was bad enough that he dreamt of her splitting flesh, he didn’t need to think of it while he was awake too. 

Roy felt fingers squeeze his elbow. No doubt it was Riza responding to his silent plight. A hand started between his shoulder blades and slid down until it rested at the small of his back, a hidden comfort. Her hand was heated against his skin, even through his military dress. 

Which, he thought, he may never wear again. 

They had come to Central Command to speak with Führer Grumman, however useless that may be. Roy was on leave. His paperwork had been sent to the hospital over and over again, yet each time it came he pretended he didn’t have enough dexterity in his fingers to sign. He could have used his mouth, Falman had so graciously pointed out, but Roy liked being indignant better than he liked compromise. It was a part of him that drove most everyone he knew crazy, and a part of him he found rather charming.

Roy spent three days in the trauma wing of a local hospital, eight doors down from Alphonse Elric. His hands underwent a tedious surgery, one that he was told took close to twelve hours, and after that he was discharged to an inpatient military-run hospital across town. It was just as loaded with people as the trauma center was. Shortages of hand towels, of therapy equipment, of soap was every Central hospital’s norm. They had to request shipments from hospitals farther from Central, out in North, mostly, and East. Of the week Roy spent in inpatient he took one shower and it was taken the day he left, when staff finally received their supplies. His hair had been so greasy it turned into ropey clumps. 

Roy now went three days a week to an outpatient clinic in west Central. The therapist there did painful things like roll a ball over Roy’s aggravated tissues in the palm of his hand, and wrap his hands in hot towels for five minutes, letting steam rise into his face and make him sweat as she scribbled away taking her notes. 

He’d been informed that his therapist is quite pretty, however that didn’t make his appointments any less uncomfortable. “I can’t see, Breda, so what does it matter what she looks like?” Roy had spat. 

“I was just telling you in case you were looking for a bright side, sir.”

“There are no bright sides when you’re blind, Lieutenant Breda.” Falman had informed the room. 

Roy had started working on Braille. He’d told Marcoh that he would accept his offer of restored eyesight and he’d meant that. However, he didn’t want to see before Havoc could walk. That was a stipulation he would not budge on. And it didn’t matter how many times Riza pleaded with him, he wasn’t going to use an ounce of that stone until all of it that was needed by Havoc was used on Havoc. Stones had limited power, they could run out, that much was clear, and neither Roy or Marcoh was sure how many times Marcoh would need to use the stone on Havoc before it worked. Roy had a feeling that maybe Fullmetal knew, but the boy was busy, and Roy didn’t feel like getting into a match of morals with him. Ed’s aversion to the use of the stones evaded Roy spectacularly.

So, he was learning to read Braille. And to rely on his hearing, which picked up quite a bit more than it used to: The squish of boots over carpet, the sound of a military vehicle versus a civilian vehicle, Riza’s soft gait, her breath, her voice, heard from hallways away.

There was nothing to plug the drain inside of him anymore. Between being told he’s a useless soldier without his sight and the looming cloud of potential for discharge pressing down on him, Roy was emptied. He was emptied of patience and he was emptied of choice. Autonomy. 

He took a deep breath to settle the nervous energy sprawling inside of him. 

“Where are we?” he asked Riza. More because he wanted a distraction and less because he didn’t know where they were. He could just make out the sizzle of alchemy on the grounds outside, and the floor was pliable beneath his boots, like he was standing on a thick rug. Everything smelled like cigars and old wood and books that hadn’t been touched in decades. This was Fuhrer Grumman’s parlor, and if Roy were to shuffle a couple paces to the left then there would be a sea foam green sofa behind him, a low mahogany table in front, wall-to-wall windows that sunlight spilled from. He could feel that on his face.

“Fuhrer Grumman’s parlor, sir,” Riza answered. Her tone was smooth, obedient. 

“Is no one else here?”

“No, sir.” 

Roy shifted on his weight. Alone. That was becoming increasingly dangerous for the two them— _alone_. 

He had watched her nearly die, her life touching that thin line between the here and the there, her blood carving a crest over the stone floor, rising up, up, up to suffocate him while he screamed for her. The short truth is that he would have switched places with her. The long truth is that he couldn’t, and the formula for human transmutation had been put on a reel in his mind, each frame slamming into the backs of his eyes as she lay still on the ground.

Roy wanted desperately to touch her then, and he wanted desperately to touch her now, if only to remind himself that her heart was beating. That her blood was caged inside of her body. 

It would be so easy to hold her face in his hands and feel her pulse beat into his palms. But he tried that last time, and she had admonished him for it. He could still feel her hot breath rolling over his mouth as she spoke. _I’m afraid this isn’t wise, Colonel_. Always so hinged. Always so formal. 

Doors opened at Roy’s back, and in swept the sound of boots on hardwood, voices murmuring. Riza guided Roy to the sofa and he sat once he felt the backs of his knees touch its edge. Like an infant opening their mouth when prompted by a bottle. Some backward rooting reflex.

“Colonel Mustang,” a deep and familiar feminine lilt came from somewhere on Roy’s right. “I see you’re still blind.”

She couldn’t know how badly the comment stung, and Roy was sure she wouldn’t care even if she did, so he responded in kind. “Blind but not thought a traitor.”

“Sir,” Riza warned. Major General Olivier Armstrong had, by all accounts, been a hero on the Promised Day. She had thrown away her image—something undeniably precious to Roy Mustang—for her country. It was admirable, and Roy owed her a thousand and one favors for it, but his hands were still stiff and his eyes were still disconnected from his brain and he didn’t feel like kissing her feet today. 

The general just scoffed. 

“Children, please,” Grumman sounded as though he’d aged ten years since Roy spoke to him last. “We aren’t here to bicker.”

_We’re here to force Roy Mustang to take leave._

“You will sign for leave today, Colonel Mustang.”

_Bingo._

“I am sending Central soldiers to Briggs with you, Major General Armstrong. There has been movement on the Cretan-Amestris and Aerugonian-Amestris borders, and I’d like to quell Drachma before they get any ideas.”

Armstrong said, “Central soldiers won’t do the job in Briggs,” at the same time Roy said, “Doesn’t that leave Central vulnerable, sir?”

Something dropped on the table in front of Roy. It hit the top with a smack and a gust of air. 

“Sign,” Grumman ordered. “I’m on thin ice as interim führer. There are only so many strings I can pull for you, Roy. Go on leave until Marcoh restores your eyesight. There is pressure from the remaining high brass to discharge you, and I think that your stepping away for a while may be what they need to calm down. Or forget entirely.”

To Armstrong, Grumman said, “We lost too many Briggs soldiers on the Promised Day, Major General. You will take Central soldiers. I’m sure you can find a place for them. As for Central, well, we’ll manage. We’ve got to.”

The stack of papers Grumman had dropped to the table suddenly appeared in Roy’s lap. Soft, nimble fingers set a pen in his own. Riza guided Roy as he signed, hand over hand, on the dotted line. She was getting awfully good at being his eyes. Before, she was his shield, his protector and his executioner, and now she’d become a much larger piece of him. A limb or a thought, reaching out, twisting, turning over in his head. She took turns with Breda staying overnight at Roy’s apartment. Actually, in Riza’s case, she’d stay until Roy fell asleep and then she’d return early the next morning, early enough to wake Roy before the sun came up. Breda usually crashed on the couch, keeping Roy up all night with his lumbering snores that sounded like they should be coming out of a cow instead of a man.

Riza’s hand lifted away from Roy’s. Then the papers were gone, stripping away the life he’d known for the last decade. 

Roy felt a bubble of fury building in his chest. And then Riza’s hand touched his own as she retrieved the pen, and the anger fizzled away. 

“Thank you,” Grumman said, sounding very relieved. And then, without missing a beat: “I’d like to offer you a promotion, Lieutenant Hawkeye.” The offer came off very informal. It didn’t matter than Grumman had used Riza’s rank, there was still a world of inference in his tone of voice, like he’d somehow pulled her in and whispered something intimate into her ear without ever actually doing so. Roy squirmed in his seat.

“Sir?” he said, because no one else would speak.

“She’ll need to be promoted in order to run that ragtag team of yours, Mustang. If you want to keep them together — and secure Lieutenant Hawkeye as your adjutant — then steps need to be taken in order to do so. I think I can manage convincing the high brass of her prowess. Her actions on the Promised Day will help quite a bit with that. I’m going to bid for lieutenant colonel, however major will do just fine too.”

General Armstrong gave a satisfied huff at Roy’s side. He could hear the gears turning in Riza’s head, but he wished he could see her face. Though if he could then they wouldn’t be in this position in the first place. It wasn’t like a promotion was the worst of things, and Grumman was right it would be a reliable placeholder for Roy, but lieutenant colonel was a hefty title to bear. It was where Roy had been a little over a year ago, and even then it’s felt like eons since he was last stationed out east. That kind of title was never one Riza had been after. Still, if they were going to overtake this setback, they needed to make room for all possibilities. Be flexible. 

“I’m afraid I cannot accept such a title, Fuhrer Grumman.” Riza intoned. She was right behind Roy now, at the back of the sofa. Her voice curled into Roy’s ears. “Lieutenant colonels are not adjutants, they run their own units. That is not what I want.” She said. And then this next bit, carefully: “That would only complicate things further, sir.”

_Things_. A multitude. 

“They won’t accept much less than a promotion to major.” Grumman said. “It wouldn’t look right if you didn’t get a promotion post-Promised Day, Lieutenant Hawkeye. People will begin to talk if you don’t start thinking about your own career. They’ll pull you away from Colonel Mustang for a suspect fraternization trial if you’re not careful.”

He was right, of course. Roy pressed the butts of his hands to his eyes. They were backed into a corner, each of them, again, all the time, round and round and round. “Can we compromise with you for captain?” Roy asked. “That leaves room for future promotions. I agree that Lieutenant Hawkeye should be compensated for her role on the Promised Day, however I’m concerned that too much too soon will be as troublesome as no promotion.”

“Funny how you’re negotiating with your fuhrer about a subordinate who is quite capable of speaking for herself, Mustang.” Olivier said coolly. “I don’t necessarily care about the dynamics between you and Lieutenant Hawkeye, but perhaps it would do you both some good to cut that cord. There is only so much covering of your ass that I can do.”

Roy was about to tell her off when he realized that his only leg to stand on was getting shorter and shorter by the minute. Even General Armstrong has been watching out for him, probably speaking on his behalf during reconstruction meetings, a place where she was welcome only tenuously. His team, the Elric brothers, he owed them his compliance. 

“I want to put any promotion off for as long as we possibly can, sir.” Riza said. “Whatever that may look like.”

“Nonsense,” Grumman quipped. “Your promotion to captain will go in effect the moment I turn these over to the registrar.” Roy heard papers flopping and knew Grumman was shaking Roy’s leave in his hand for emphasis. “Be proud of your own accomplishments, Lieutenant Hawkeye. Your team will need you in the coming weeks more than ever.”

Riza prepped to retort, but Fuhrer Grumman beat her to it. “Dismissed,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos and comments would be lovely!


	5. hey, how's the weather?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've got enough chapters done to post more often if i wanna, and i wanna. so here ya go

Roy positioned himself on the sofa. It was old, creaked a bit when he put his weight on it, but he’d had Breda rearrange his furniture so that the back of the sofa now faced the single window in Roy’s living room. Being blind, there wasn’t much sense in leaving the sofa to face his radio, or his towering pile of old, cracked textbooks, or the rectangular outline of his front door. Roy craved sensation now. He liked to sit beneath the fan and feel the air wash over his skin, he liked the bath water to be either too hot or too cold so there could be no mistaking its influence on him; he wanted the sofa’s back at his window so the sunlight would press in on his back, his neck, caress his shoulders. There were many things he lost when his eyesight was stolen, but many things he gained too.

He knew the sound of Riza’s steps and how they differed from Breda’s. Where his were slow, heavy, lumbering, Riza’s were methodical. Quiet. She placed just enough weight on the balls of her feet that when her heel struck the ground it sounded like a tap, like someone striking the floor with a switch. Falman’s were like that too, only his were slower. Fuery’s footsteps skittered like a mouse; he had a short swing phase. It was very close to a shuffle.

And Riza’s breaths were distinguishable too.

The smell of her shampoo.

Her hands, calloused in all the right places, calloused where they gripped weapons and where her boxing gloves had chafed them, leaving circles of rough skin over the bony prominences of her hands: Her thumb carpometacarpal joint, the distal crease of her palm, the head of her ulna. All the places Roy’s therapist attended to as she splinted his hands, reminding him repeatedly that those particular landmarks were prone to rubbing. Roy had soft hands. Cradled by gloves for most of his adult life, holding nothing but a fire in them.

Breda went about in Roy’s kitchen. His steps clunked over the floor, and Roy thought briefly of his neighbors downstairs. Surely their patience will run out and they’ll file a complaint about the two hundred and fifty pound man stomping around in the kitchen above them. “You find a cockroach or something in there, Breda?”

“What, sir?”

“You’re throwing your feet at the floor.”

“My bad, sir.” Breda still moved about in the kitchen, now wrestling with the dishes in Roy’s sink. “You gonna call Havo?”

Roy was going to call Havoc. But like usual he was being a fucking coward about it. What would he say this time? He had nothing to report to his second lieutenant except bad news. Hey, man, I’ve been sent on leave! Forcibly! What? You still can’t take much more than a baby step? Aren’t we a pair.

“You’ll hurt his feelings if you keep him out of the loop much longer, sir.” Breda said. The water was gushing out of the faucet, coating Roy’s dirty dishes. He could hear the spray glance over the curve of a spoon and Breda hiss. “Ah, shit.”

“I can do my own dishes, Breda. Leave them.”

“Lieutenant Hawkeye told me to—“

“Leave them.”

The water ceased. “Yes, sir. Though it won’t be you who takes her wrath for it.”

Roy put his hand out and searched for the phone. He’d had Breda move it along with his sofa. It sat on a shimmering brass-and-glass end table, propped up by four gold painted legs. A bit gaudy, but a gift from Madame Christmas, who was also a bit gaudy. After a few seconds too long of searching, Breda’s big, warm hand grasped Roy’s. He turned Roy’s hand supine and placed the long, cold receiver in it. Then he took Roy’s finger and, one by one, hand over hand, they used the finger wheel to dial for Havoc.

First ring. “Havoc’s General Store.”

Roy swallowed. “Hey Jean.”

“Ah, it’s the Colonel,” Havoc said. His eastern accent had been replaced by the sharpness of Central’s last Roy saw him, but it was back in full swing now, every word he spoke sounding like it was swinging on a branch. He was acclimated. “You’re not really going to wait until I can walk, are you?”

Roy’s heart did a leap into his throat. How did he know? Had Hawkeye called him? Breda? Grumman? Was it — no — could it already be in the papers? As far as Havoc knew, Roy was going to use the stone immediately, no one had updated him otherwise. But if Roy’s leave was in the paper, and even if it was cryptic like it should be, then Havoc could have seen and figured it out.

Feeling a little like a child caught with his hand where it doesn’t belong, Roy said, “We don’t know how much of the stone Marcoh will need. We don’t even know how much juice is in that thing.”

“It ain’t a battery.”

“It kind of is, Havoc.” A battery that ran on human souls, but a battery nonetheless.

“I just wanna say, Boss,” Havoc said, and Roy heard him flipping a damned lighter open. He took a deep breath and his voice came back sounding constricted, like he was holding the smoke in his lungs. “You’re bein’ pretty stupid. I can live a full life without my legs, but this country won’t make it without you.” He paused, breathing out. “Actually, do I have to call you ‘sir’ right now? Are you gonna hold it against me if I don’t? ‘Cuz I’m not really feeling like being reprimanded the moment I walk back into HQ.”

“You weren’t ever permitted to call me ‘Boss’ to begin with, Havoc, yet you did anyway.”

Havoc sucked on his cigarette again. Probably he was manning the register, his smoke coating the ceiling, his eyes cast upward, watching it spiral. A blanket over his lap to keep his legs warm, a cushion under his ass to keep the ulcers at bay. “I think you secretly like it.”

Havoc was wrong. Roy would be stupid to leave him behind.

“How’s Riza?” Havoc said. He changed the subject abruptly, but carefully. He knew their conversation about Roy’s choice had already stagnated, that it wouldn’t go anywhere. There was no winning or losing, only what was. And what was was Marcoh and that stone and its limited use, and the desperate hope that maybe there would be a bit of power left for Roy. That Havoc would walk on his own into Central Headquarters again, a rifle slung over his shoulder, an unlit cancer stick between his teeth.

“She’s being promoted.” Roy said, and then he surged reluctantly into a recount of the day’s events. Havoc whistled into the phone when Roy was through.

“Captain!” He said. “‘Atta girl. She’d put a bullet through my temple for saying that, don’t you dare tell her I did.”

“She’d put a bullet through mine just for repeating it to her, Havoc.”

“Breda tells me she’s been helping you out around the apartment.” Havoc, though not nearly the brightest of Roy’s retinue, was very good at niggling people for information. He was a self-proclaimed idiot in much everything besides marksmanship, but Roy understood that it was all a facade to hide his true intelligence under the guise of loud vapidness. He was prying for more than what his words would suggest, and Roy was far from inclined to let him in on…it.

“It” being the strange new way Roy and his adjutant navigated their relationship. Roy’s been watching her die ever since the Promised Day, behind closed and open eyes. It was all he could think about. The images would come, fast and unrelenting, and he was powerless to stop them. His chest would tighten, palms would sweat; he could swear he was back under Central in those tunnels, his hands filling with her blood. Cupped, overflowing, dripping from between his fingertips.

He had tried to kiss her recently. That hadn’t gone the way he might have wanted, but instead went the way it should have: Riza politely turning him down, gently offering to forfeit her shifts in his home to Falman or Fuery. Roy had all but begged her to bar both those men from his apartment — Breda was already insufferable, what with the snoring — and she’d obliged with a single stipulation: He never try that again.

In his defense, he hadn’t gotten close. She was very adept at maintaining her distance. In a lot of ways she’d done it better than he had over the years. She was always that voice of reason, the one person in Roy’s life besides Fullmetal who would look him straight in the eye and tell him he was stupid.

“Breda’s been helping quite a bit too. Everyone’s got their part to play.” Roy said.

“And what part are Fuery and Falman playing, sir?”

Curse you, Havoc.

“Falman is petitioning to stay in North, and Fuery has his hands full rewiring comms for HQ. Breda and Lieutenant Hawkeye decided it would be best to take turns terrorizing me in my own home.” But how will that change once Riza’s been promoted? Surely she couldn’t stay out of Central HQ during the day like she has been. It would all fall to Breda, then. Roy’s stomach clenched uncomfortably. He’d spent over a decade’s worth of nights without Riza in close proximity, so why does the thought of it bother him so badly now?

“Falman wants to stay up north, huh?”

“He’s found a comfortable living there, I suppose.”

“With the Ice Queen?” Havoc scoffed. “There’s gotta be a woman. No one would subject their balls to that bitter cold unless they were dipping their candy stick in some suga—”

“I do not need to hear about Falman’s candy stick, Havoc.”

“All I’m saying is I’m happy for him.” Roy did not think that that was what Havoc was saying, but he didn’t pry further for fear of being forced to listen to more about Falman’s hypothetical sex life.

“I was reading the papers the other day and saw somethin’ about unrest in the south.”

“Our neighboring countries have been vying for our attention since the days following the Promised Day.” Roy said. “Aerugo is especially feisty. We’ve had to pull quite a few MPs from Aerugat in order to cover a pissed off Drachma in the north and a simmering Creta. They all want their piece of a country that’s been needling them for a hundred years and I can’t really say I blame them.”

“Sounds like a lotta work.” Havoc said, lighting another cig. “It’s been quiet out here, though I saw those trucks go through town a few days ago. Starting on Ishval early, I guess?”

Roy steeled himself. Trucks? He hadn’t heard a thing about it. It was possible Grumman ordered them out there prematurely, knowing Roy would be on leave and therefore exempt from the whole operation. “I don’t know a thing about trucks,” Roy said. Wouldn’t they have told Riza, though? And she would have told him. She would have.

“No?” Havoc said. “They were definitely military. Just a couple of ‘em. I thought that maybe more would be coming but it’s been a few days and so I figured maybe there was pushback from Ishval. Maybe not.”

Roy schooled himself. There were several things he could do with this information: First, he could panic. Roy wasn’t one who tended toward catastrophizing but the state of things lately had left him feeling like Jell-O, moldable and somewhat floppy, bending either which way without much say in the matter. Second, he could call the fuhrer. He could pry about the trucks and whether Grumman wanted to let him in on the loop or not wouldn’t matter because at the very least Roy would be able to glean from him a nugget of what was going on. Third, he could call Riza.

“What’s up?” Breda said. He was sunk into the sofa at Roy’s side, forearms on his knees, ear turned toward the receiver.

“Havoc,” Roy started, pushing himself up straighter on the couch. “I need you to watch for those trucks. Watch for anything weird. Keep an eye out especially for people you don’t recognize.”

“What do you think’s going on, Boss?” Havoc pressed.

“Probably nothing,” Roy said, his spine curling back into the plush sofa. It was probably nothing, but Roy was feeling vulnerable. Between the recent blindness and Amestris’s latest fumble, things were beginning to unravel. Roy clenched and unclenched his butchered hands. They still smarted when he tried to make a fist, and the stitches resisted his every movement, but his therapist had told him some movement was better than none. So he clenched and unclenched, biting back at the pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos & comments. writers r starving


	6. the grass is greener

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> changed "SUVs" to "trucks" in the previous chapter. "SUV" was a placeholder word, but the vehicles i'm talking about are old ass wwi trucks lol

Cole fit the gun between his thighs. There was a cloying, wet stench in the truck bed that made him gag. He had to free his hands or else he was afraid he might blow chunks all over the floorboards, and Seamus would kick his ass for it. Better he vomit into his own hands then have his butt handed to him by a fifty-year-old creep.

It was getting darker outside. The places where the tan cargo cover came free from the truck bed let in dim light, the deep orange of sunset. All day Cole had spied blue and green from the four corners of the truck bed where the cover lifted off, held in place only by thin slips of rope. He’d bent his head up and down, crimping his neck, watching gravel and dirt kick up over the road, clouding the green, green grass which reached hip height in some places. Back in Aerugat, grass had been padded down to mud by Amestrian MPs and their trucks. The only spots where Cole had ever seen grass were in a select few yards where some poor soul had wept blood, sweat, and tears defending their right to raise the little green blades. It didn’t stop some of the crueler MPs from stomping the meager squares of grass out with their boot like schoolyard bullies.

Cole pressed his lips to one of the cargo cover’s openings. He sucked in air that smelled like the stale air of the truck bed but fresher, cool against the back of his throat.

“You’re gonna go with them, Cole.” Ceel had said. He’d gripped Cole’s shoulders tightly, fingernails digging in. “I need you to go. It might not be safe here once they notice that Colonel Mustang’s been taken. You’re gonna go with with them, and I’ll let you guys know when it’s safe to come this way.” What did that mean? Cole wondered idly. He pulled up from where he’d been drinking the eastern Amestris air and wiped a sleeve over his mouth. How would Ceely contact them? How was Cole safer here in this truck than he was with Ceely? Colonel Mustang could fry people alive whether he could see or not, and Cole was pretty sure he had a sniper adjutant too. None of this felt safer than Aerugat.

Seamus was staring at Cole from the other side of the truck bed, eyes narrowed, fuzzy dark brows pulled tight over black eyes. The people of Aeurgo traditionally had dark hair, eyes, and skin but Seamus was inky. His eyes undulated like deep, bottomless black pools. Cole was always put off by him and his severely dark gazes, the droopy pull of his face. He looked like someone had removed his eyes and filled his skull with oil. 

“Wattaya doin’ there, boy?” Seamus’s ‘doing’ sounded like ‘done.’ Everything he said was accompanied by a twinge, like he’d taken the last letter of the word and screwed it up tight.

“It smells in here,” Cole said. His stomach did an uncomfortable flip as he was made consciously aware of the stink again. The sun sank ever lower, pulling darkness over him like a curtain.

“It smells everywhere here, boy.” His "here" sounded like "ear." Seamus hocked a loogie onto the floor. “This is the east. It’s all cow shit up here.”

Rather than go straight through the south, Ceely had requested the group pull east. There were checkpoints all along the border on all sides, but the desert was largely undisturbed by MP presence. Especially since Amestris’s light show, every MP station had been thinned, in some places leaving less than half behind. The hardest part of the trek so far had been getting the trucks out of Aerugat, and even that wasn’t particularly daunting since Ceely had done it before and the MPs had come to expect that sort of behavior from him. This time it wasn’t Ceely behind the wheel, though, and the MPs would notice him in Aerugat and two of their trucks missing…and then what? Surely Ceely was smart enough to have anticipated that himself.

Cole brought his chin down and stuck his nose in his shirt. He breathed in his own musk, sweat and dirt, but it was better than the smell of boiling manure mixed with men who hadn’t brushed their teeth or washed their ball sacks in six days. Cole didn’t have a ball sack, and for that he was grateful. At least he wasn’t contributing.

The darker it got, the cooler it got. Everything went orange then blue then black and by the time the world was coated in dark, Cole was shivering. The chill erased the fetid smell of the truck bed. Now Cole was just cold, he pulled his knees up onto the bench and hugged his gun in his jacket.

Moonlight filtered in through the cargo cover. It outlined the truck bed’s arches, where the cover pulled tightly over them. The nails Ceel had instructed Cole to drill into the arches to keep the cover in place lit like stars, glistening when the truck hit a bump and light glanced off them.

“Don’t understand why Ceely would send an infant to kidnap the Flame Alchemist.” Seamus sneered. He set those depthless eyes on Cole. His rubbery jaw moved up and down as he chewed on absolutely nothing, moving his mouth as part of some ritualistic maneuver to keep Cole intimated. “Do you even know how to handle a gun, boy?”

“Leave him alone, Seamus.” Bertie’s dark head of bouncing chocolate curls whipped around. “We’re a united front, remember? And Ceely will have your dick if you fuck with Cole.”

Seamus snorted. Literally, like a pig. Cole winced. “I ain’t afraid of the boy. That’s what he is, you know. They both’s just fuckin’ boys. I don’t even know what I’m doin’ here.”

“I’ll kick you out of this car right now if you don’t shut the fuck up, Seamus.” Greer snapped. She had a short fuse, always giving everybody what they deserved the moment they deserved it. She wasn’t a believer in thinking before you speak. Cole was usually put off by such aggressive behavior, but he appreciated it now. He hadn’t left Aerugat since Ceely had taken him there seven years ago. The smells, the sounds, the blue and green, all of it was nauseating. To add Seamus to it was like cutting a wound into Cole’s skin and pressing salt in it.

It didn’t matter. Cole would not speak up on his own behalf. The trouble would only double. He needed to get through the next few days with his body intact and nothing more. Nothing more.

Unlike Greer, Cole had an abundant amount of patience. If you were born a pacifist, then you were born with patience. That’s what Ceely always said. “I wish I had some patience.” Ceely would ruffle Cole’s hair. “I wish I weren’t so quick to nip.” But Cole hadn’t acquired his patience through his pacifism. He wasn’t afraid to be impatient because he was afraid to fight — not against it, just afraid. He was patient because he’d be dead if he hadn’t been. He’d be in a ditch. He’d be mixed with Aerugat’s mud.

“Boys,” Seamus said. “Greer, you bitch, you ain’t shit so keep your mouth shut. This shoulda been a mission for men and men only. No bitches and no fuckin’ boys.”

It happened quicker than Cole had anticipated it would. One second Greer was seated on the bench a few feet to the left of Cole and now the heel of her combat boot was tucked snug against Seamus’s crotch, the muzzle of her gun assaulting his shoulder. Her face was close to his but not so close that she would easily smell his breath, which Cole suspected had been contributing to the rancid smell from earlier. He freed his chin from his shirt to get a better look.

“Take your shot, Greer.” Seamus said. To his credit, he didn’t even look uncomfortable.

Greer kicked off the bench. “You’re not worth the lecture I’d get from Ceely.” She said, sitting back down beside Cole but closer this time. Her thigh almost touched his, he could feel the heat radiating off her. Or was that the anger?

“Just wait ‘till them bullets get to flyin’, Greer.” Seamus said, settling down into himself. He scratched his inner thigh, licked his floppy crusted lips. “You wait, girlie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "every two weeks" my ass. i'm doing this new thing where i write 500 words/day and it's making this whole fic much easier to manage. kudos & comments pwease!


	7. this is not what i signed up for

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i kept trying to add to the end of this chapter and it just wasnt working out. i like to think of that as an indication that this chapter has reached its saturation limit and must be posted in order for me to, ah, cleanse my palate. hope you enjoy~

It was infuriating.

Not the fact that she was here, but the fact that she let him know it. Repeatedly. Constantly. In every movement or breath, in all her infuriatingly knowable (to him) mannerisms. This was supposed to have been Breda’s night, and Roy was feeling vulnerable. He needed Breda. He needed someone who wouldn’t invoke his most basic, primitive needs. Hell, Hayate would have been a better Breda substitute at this juncture.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t thrilled to see her — okay, smell and hear but it wasn’t like the image of her had gone from his mind in recent weeks. In fact, he was giddy that she’d joined him. Giddy, and infuriated. Surely she knew he wasn’t expecting her to come back, not after being promoted. Not after inheriting his — her — team. He had hung around with Breda all day, chatting on the phone with Havoc, roasting his back at the window, fighting off images of a gold tooth and blood spattered hands. His blood spattered hands. Hers too, coated and sticky, seen between clumps of yellow hair mixed with red. He never imagined she would come back, and after Grumman warned them that people would suspect fraternization, of all things—

But it was fraternization, wasn’t it? Fraternization didn’t always mean _We know you tried to kiss her_ or _We know you have nightmares and_ daymares _about her death_. It meant _We know you have a preference for this person_. She’d thumb his broken hands for saying it, but he did have a preference for her. And she knew. On all levels, she knew. But the thinking and especially the saying was not allowed. Forbidden.

He swallowed hard as he remembered having her face so close to his. His lips brushing close enough to hers that he hadn’t been sure if they’d touched at all. Her breath, mingling with his, rolling over his mouth. His hands, her face, cupped between them like he was holding a heart, a soul. Fragile but hot in his hands, liquifying, searing his skin.

Fraternization indeed.

He was a goner. Spun-out, jobless. He was running out of things to keep him tethered to reality, to remind him to mind himself and his station.

“Where is Hayate tonight?” He asked. He was having tomato soup, and he scooped the remainder of it up with a stale piece of bread. The butt of a baguette, he suspected, by the texture and hard curve of the end.

“Fuery’s got him.” Riza said. He could hear her in the kitchen, right where Breda was earlier in the day, placing dishes in cupboards. Her steps were light, minuscule. “I always leave him with Fuery, sir.”

She said this because she knew his head wasn’t in it. “It” being the real agenda for the night, the pre-ordained schedule of dinner, chore, chore, chore, exercises, chore, chore. She said this because he was distracted, she could tell. She could tell by the way he rubbed the bread along the bottom of his bowl slower than usual, careful to soak up every last drop of a soup he wasn’t even particularly fond of but that was easy for a newly blind person to make. One only had to find the can opener (placed expertly in a neat row of utensils over the counter by their thoughtful adjutant, who always aligned fork, knife, spoon from left to right), a pot (hung neatly over the sink, small to medium to large), and the knob on the stove (taped so Roy knew which were the front burners and which were the back two by running his fingers over them).

“That you do,” Roy said. He had a feeling this was how their night was going to go: stuffy indoor activities to punctuate their stuffy toeing of illegality. That’s what it was to him, at least. Outside, he listened intently to the thrum of automobiles as they sped along the cobbled and concrete roads. _Thunk, thunk, thunk._ There was a pothole on sixth, just outside his apartment, and every time it caught a victim Roy’s chest fell hard. The noise used to be obnoxious, but now it was otherworldly. Now he was frequently unsure if the things he heard were made up by his brain. Now he had no sight to muddy his other senses. Now, he survived off his intuition and his (in)ability to memorize where the damned coffee table leg jutted out over his living room rug. “Put tape on that, please!” He’d snapped once before. Riza’s reply was smooth. “You are not a cat, sir.”

It became easier to hear the hum of electricity this late at night. It chattered in Roy’s ears, filling his apartment walls, his canals. His ears were sodden with noise. Below that, the smell of the soup, the tomato overpowering. He could smell its influence on ketchup. He knew how the smell changed between pure, liquified tomatoes dusted with salt and pepper to a muted version, one clogging up the pores of his crumbling baguette.

Ah, there. Riza sat beside him on the couch. She was far enough away that he’d have to lean if he wanted to touch her. Good call on her part. He very much did want to touch her.

“I’ve got to sign some things.” She said. “But I’d like to help you with your dishes first, sir. If that’s all right.” Carefully, she lifted the bowl from his hands. This must have meant his soup was gone and he’d been rubbing his soggy baguette over clean plastic. He shoved the remainder of his baguette in his mouth and relented, his fingers linking with Riza’s as she led him into the kitchen.

She’d gotten very good at encouraging Roy to guide himself than to rely on her. Her steps here were measured, and she’d wait to take them until Roy took his, tentatively navigating his way out of the living room and into the rectangular kitchen, pushing her where he thought they needed to go. Riza placed the bowl in the sink and asked that Roy get the dishes started. She’d dry them, she said.

Roy first checked that the dishes were piled on one side of the sink, the side nearest to his drying rack. This must have been why Riza asked him not to have Breda do the dishes in the afternoon. She had always been vocal about Breda’s tendency to do for Roy instead of allowing Roy to do for himself. Roy very much preferred Riza’s way about his blindness anyway: Riza was all about independence, something that aligned with his therapist’s obstinate views on doing for oneself. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and all that.

While Roy found the rhetoric a bit outdated, the women in his life lived and breathed it. All of them. Even the casual ones. He thought maybe they had monthly meetings or something. Flyers.

Roy switched the water on. He waited for it to warm up, passing the top of his hand under the water quickly to avoid a burn in case he’d set the handle too far to the left. When Riza had asked the therapist if it was safe for Roy to do his dishes Roy had secretly wished she’d say no. Instead she sent him home with boxes of gloves and told Riza that dishes would be a great way to exercise his hands and regain some functional mobility. He felt for the gloves over the kitchen counter in front of him, the one that overlooked his living room.

“A degree to your right, sir.” Riza said. He found them and with great effort dragged them on, wincing as they put pressure on his orthosis. He’d been concerned about the thickness of his orthosis, but his therapist had suggested that it would maintain the safety of his incision while allowing for enough range of motion that he could still exercise his fingers in functional ranges of extension and flexion. Though he found it limited his ability to touch his fingers to his palm, and to perform his opposition exercises, he also knew the therapist was right. He liked the freedom of the soft cuff wrapped circumferentially around his hand. He liked the protection it provided.

Once covered with rubber gloves, Roy dipped his hands into the sink. He thought back to all he’d eaten over the last twenty-four hours, hoping he wouldn’t come upon a knife before he could remember ever having used one. “Slowly, sir. It’s not a race.”

Indeed it was not. But at least it kept Roy’s mind off Riza, until she said something or breathed a little louder than usual or her shoulder almost touched his as she leaned sideways to see into the sink and watch his hands work clumsily over one another. Roy pricked his finger on the tip of a knife and hissed through his teeth. Riza sighed but didn’t correct his error for him, she merely told him he wasn’t bleeding and to find the handle. He did, and after a moment of grappling with the soap bottle (which was hard when he couldn’t completely close his hands over it) he began the arduous task of doing his dishes.

Riza dried each plate and bowl and utensil as they came her way. Her typical quiet demeanor shone in the blank nothing of Roy’s blindness. In the screech of wheels outside, in the fumbling of keys in the hall, in the buzz of Roy’s overhead lights. Sometimes it was like Riza said the most when she was quiet, like Roy could read every thought in her head as easily as he could read Braille. Okay, he sucked at reading Braille. As easily as he used to be able to read textbooks would be a more apt comparison, but he had goals.

Riza helped peel the gloves off of him when they were through with the dishes. Her slim fingers tugged gingerly at the rubber gloves, rolling them down his wrists and over the meat of his palms. She did the left hand first, then the right, and each time she’d hold a hand briefly between hers, like she was trying to warm it. She squeezed just enough that he would feel it, but not enough that it would hurt.

“What now?” Roy asked. He didn’t know what he expected of her anymore. But he knew what he wanted from her, and he knew how dreadfully dangerous that want could be, how dangerous it had already become. He couldn’t anticipate her response. There were a thousand ways in which their relationship remained the same after Riza’s near-death, and a million other ways in which it had changed.

“I suppose we could practice some Braille.” She said. She didn’t move from her place in front of him. Heat from the sunset framed the side of Roy’s body, flooding in from the large living room window. “You could do some reading of it while I work on these reports for Fuhrer Grumman. You would need to do some tendon glides afterward, sir. We don’t want you to fall behind on your therapy. The therapist was adamant about preventing a contracture, which I’ve heard are painful. That would be a setback we can’t affo--”

“That isn’t what I meant, Lieuten— Captain. You know what I meant.”

“I’m sure I don’t.” Riza replied, still unmoving.

“What now?” Roy said again. “Grumman’s forced my hand. You’ve been promoted. So, what now?”

“What do you mean what now?” Riza said. There was an edge to her voice, serrated. “I was opposed to your being sent on leave. I think kicking disabled officers out of their posts is egregious, but I am not the fuhrer.” She sounded winded, she was talking so fast now. “I think I never wanted to be captain. My paperwork is there on your couch, waiting patiently for me to sign control of your unit over to myself. What happens now? We take the next step despite our grievances. Sir.”

She was upset, Roy knew. She was upset, but he couldn’t help it. “Why are you here, Captain?”

“Because it was my rotation tonight, sir.”

“This is no longer considered your purview. You can delegate. You have bigger responsibilities now.”

“Respectfully, I don’t consider overseeing the fuhrer’s ground reconstruction a larger responsibility than overseeing your recovery, sir.”

Roy, slow as he could, touched his ruined hand to Riza’s ruined neck. He thumbed the gauze there. The heat was a telltale sign that she had been overexerting herself, that her injury was still angry, inflamed, fresh, new, waiting on his periphery to steal her away. His other hand came up to cup her cheek. She wrapped each of his forearms in her hands, stopping his movements.

“We had a deal, sir.” She said. Her voice was an airy whisper, like she was having trouble speaking. Like all the fight had left her in one breath. Roy lowered his arms.

For weeks, Roy could only see the past behind his eyes, and he could only imagine what the present looked like. The truth of that was like being stuck in a memory but knowing where you might have gone had you not gotten stuck. It was being in love, seeing the end, and being powerless to stop it. It was a specific and rather malicious kind of torture, something that took place almost entirely in Roy’s head but of which he was not able to escape. Humans were not really more than the sum of their parts, were they? They were slaves to thoughts, however intrusive or contrite or other they may be.

This particular memory, one made up of gruesome snapshots of red on blonde, was particularly unrelenting. Where within the darkness of Roy’s blindness were visions of chess games with Grumman, his aunt’s place, his bunk at the academy and the man he sometimes shared it with, and that specific kind of pink the sky turned during the summer when the sun lit just a bit differently, there was also Riza. Everywhere, Riza. The blood, Riza. Chess, Riza. Sunsets, Riza. Blood, Riza. Blood. It was like Roy hadn’t been allowed to see just how badly he yearned for Riza until that was all his brain could do. No distractions. No other. He lost his ability to see her, that connection had been cut, rewired, rerouted, and his brain made it up where it could.

And his brain was cruel.

Steeling himself for what would surely be a lifetime of chastising at best, Roy said, “I don’t see anything but you anymo—“

“Don’t—“ Riza said before he could go on. She put a hot hand to his chest, feeling flowing in from her to him like through a circuit. Circling, circling. Running up her arm and into his heart and back again.

“It’s just you and that gold toothed doctor and all of that blood and I—“

“If you say much more, Colonel—“

“—can’t escape it. It gnaws at me like a wild animal, Hawk—“

“Colonel,” she cut him off again, they were practically talking over one another. He felt as frantic as she had sounded earlier, like everything he’d ever thought about her needed to come out and come out now or he’d blow, his head would come straight off. “Don’t take this into unknown—“

“Would you let me speak, Hawkeye, just this once?”

“No,” she said, resolute. But her hand had curled into his shirt. “Not about this, sir.”

“I might have done it, Hawkeye, if the chimera hadn’t shown up.” The confession burned him. He knew it burned her too, though he couldn’t see her face. Once, when they were younger, a boy from out east had cornered them behind a deli, his smock dirtied with oil and grit. Stained dark like his teeth. His white pants were streaked green from an afternoon tumbling in the grass, playing ball, probably, or working the fields. He’d been a good foot taller than Roy, and had more than that on Riza, but it was Riza whose face had crumpled in anger. It was Riza whose fists went flying, and whose nose had gotten bloodied. Roy couldn’t remember what it was that the boy had said to make her so mad, he only knew that that had been the last time he’d seen her lose her vice-like control on her temper.

Though he couldn’t see her, he felt that control fold in on itself, getting smaller and smaller. But its flavor was different than back then.

Would he really have done it? Once he had been given the gift of time, the panic had ebbed a little. But was it the promise of help or the solidifying of his morals that had stopped Roy back then beneath Central? He was stewing in the terror of that day. So maybe what he said just now wasn’t true. Maybe it was all that his mind could conjure up to protect him from the uncomfortable nature of his dreams, day and night. Maybe it was his firewall, this promise to himself that Riza would have never died in the tunnels even if he hadn’t been lucky. That she’ll never die in his dreams, either, because it was never about luck but determination, but the unwavering fact that Roy Mustang would have willingly sacrificed his sight to bring her back anyway.

There was a good chance it wasn’t true, but there was an equal chance that it was.

Without warning, Riza kissed him. It was hard, angry, there was no room to debate it and no room to understand where it had come from either. Roy wasn’t acting on instinct when he wrapped her in his arms and pulled her closer, but instead was purposefully, deliberately, calculatingly, trying to cage her between his arms and chest. He didn’t want her to leave, he didn’t want her to move away and claim she had been mistaken, he wanted her to stay angry.

“I thought we had a deal?” He said. It was a gamble saying anything, but sometimes the easiest way to rile Riza was to talk to Riza. She had her fingers buried in the hair at the nape of his neck and her nails dug in, scraping, pawing at him.

“I have a new deal,” she said. “Do not call me Riza.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they boned, yeah.


End file.
